IV “Won’t your mother be looking for you?” the conductor asked when he gave the girl her ticket. “No, no one will be looking for me,” she said. The bus started, and again there were the same wonderful sights. Valli wasn’t bored in the slightest and greeted everything with the same excitement she’d felt the first time.
But suddenly she saw a young cow lying dead by the roadside, just where it had been struck by some fast-moving vehicle. “Isn’t that the same cow that ran in front of the bus on our trip to town?” she asked the conductor. The conductor nodded, and she was overcome with sadness. What had been a lovable, beautiful creature just a little while ago had now suddenly lost its charm and its life and looked so horrible, so frightening as it lay there, legs spreadeagled, a fixed stare in its lifeless eyes, blood all over...
The bus moved on. The memory of the dead cow haunted her, dampening her enthusiasm. She no longer wanted to look out the window. She sat thus, glued to her seat, until the bus reached her village at three forty.
She stood up and spreadeagled spread out haunted returned repeatedly to her mind; was impossible to forget stretched herself. Then she turned to the conductor and said, “Well, sir, hope to see you again.” “Okay, madam,” he answered her, smiling. “Whenever you feel like a bus ride, come and join us. And don’t forget to bring your fare.” She laughed and jumped down from the bus.
Then away she went, running straight for home. When she entered her house she found her mother awake and talking to one of Valli’s aunts, the one from South Street. This aunt was a real chatterbox, never closing her mouth once she started talking. “And where have you been?” said her aunt when Valli came in.
She spoke very casually, not expecting a reply. So Valli just smiled, and her mother and aunt went on with their conversation. “Yes, you’re right,” her mother said. “So many things in our midst